Polycom saved the day! That’s what Adjunct Professor Jennifer Cooper of TJSL’s Writing Lab & Academic Success Program said when she had to cancel her March 3rd trip to North Carolina Central University School of Law in Durham, North Carolina to present “How to Pimp Your TWEN Page: Engaging Your Students On Their Turf – Online” at the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning conference.

“I was supposed to present in person, but due to a family emergency, I couldn’t travel to North Carolina,” Professor Cooper said. “That’s when TJSL Multimedia Specialist John Snay and the NCCU School of Law technology team rallied and I was able to present as scheduled using our Polycom system in the recording studio.”

Snay says this is a useful tool for TJSL professors to utilize “Our Polycom system is a video conferencing solution that allows two locations to pass audio and video to each other, through the internet,” says Snay. “The Polycom units are incorporated into many of our classrooms as well as our recording studios, enabling us to broadcast our lectures and discussions to remote locations.”

“If it weren’t for Polycom, my presentation would have been cancelled,” said Professor Cooper. “With Polycom, I was still able to participate in the conference and share my ideas about maximizing TWEN to better reach our students while being home in San Diego to take care of my family.”

The Polycom system at TJSL extends professors classroom and teaching capabilities - whether those teaching opportunities are to other students or other faculty at distant universities. Polycom allows TJSL to maximize efficiency by offering the same teaching and presenting options without the disruption of travel.

Professor Cooper says “Absolutely!” when asked if she highly recommends using this tool to other professors.

“TJSL’s classroom technology is amazing, both the Echo360 lecture capture system as well as the Polycom system,” said Cooper. “I use the Echo360 lecture capture every week and share my recorded classes with my students via my TWEN page. This was the first time that I used the Polycom system to present, but it will not be the last. I look forward to other opportunities to use it in the future.”

And Professor Cooper says another cool thing about the day was that TJSL Professor Julie Cromer Young was also presenting at the ILTL conference on teaching via Polycom and she was actually doing a Polycom presentation from North Carolina with students here at TJSL.